AHMR African Human Mobilty Review - Volume 8 No 3, SEP-DEC 2022 According to Manby, these efforts impacted Zimbabwe’s neighbouring countries. Hundreds of individuals moved from Zimbabwe to Mozambique, where they had ancestry but could not satisfy citizenship requirements for either country. Similarly, Malawi received an unknown number of returnees who had to undergo expensive and lengthy processes to prove their citizenship. Hundreds of thousands — possibly even millions — fled to neighbouring South Africa. Some received refugee status while others migrated or stayed illegally. In response to pressure from neighbouring countries, in 2003, the government provided some small concessions that allowed people born in Zimbabwe who are descendants of farmworkers, mineworkers, domestic employees, or other unskilled labourers to apply for confirmation of their citizenship. Very few could access these concessions because they had already lost their citizenship, and the administrative burden was too high.1 When the unity government began in 2009, citizenship laws were among the many battlegrounds between the MDC and ZANU-PF. The MDC successfully fought for expanded citizenship provisions in the new 2013 Constitution, including allowing dual citizenship for those who acquired more than one at birth. To date, the Citizenship Act has not been amended to reflect these changes. Many people began re-applying for confirmation of citizenship with hopes of voting, crossing borders, and getting a bank account or a job, but their applications were denied. As recently as August 2019, the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission has called for assistance for border communities in obtaining identification documents, noting that the Registrar-General is commanding high fees, demanding non-existent documents, and wrongly recording information on documents.2 (b) South Africa South Africa has an unknown number of stateless people and does not report any statelessness statistics. However, statelessness is believed to be a substantial problem and threatens to grow as the country appears to be on a path to continue weaponising nationality and deepening xenophobia. While promising an Afrocentric orientation and policy platform, South Africa has become one of the most hostile destinations in the world for African migrants.3 Most of the stateless population in South Africa are believed to be migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees from neighbouring countries. Orphaned or abandoned children and children born to undocumented or irregular migrants are also at risk of increasing statelessness. A 2019 study conducted by the Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town found that 40% of foreign children in youth and care centres faced statelessness, Ibid. The Herald ‘ID nightmare for border communities’ (13 August 2019), available at www.herald.co.zw/id-nightmare-forborder-communities/ 3 Christopher Claassen ‘Explaining South African xenophobia’ Afrobarometer WP 173 (2017). 1 2 84